Food history is a relatively new scholarly discipline, going back only about thirty years. It evolved from two seemingly disparate human endeavors, cooking and recording general history. The late food historian Karen Hess observed in 1981: “Few scholars are cooks—and fewer cooks scholars. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that no other aspect of human endeavor has been so neglected …
Datil Peppers: Heat with a History
by Richard Villadónigawww.eat-american.com Editor’s Note: According to an announcement in the St. Augustine Record dated February 3, 2010, Johnny’s Restaurant (described in the text below) has changed owners and will re-open as the Hastings Cafe on February 11. The location will remain the same. Some people crave a big, juicy, medium-rare steak or a decadent chocolate dessert. Me, I’m …
Out of the Ash: The Prehistoric Chile Cuisine of Cerén
By Dave DeWitt On an August evening in A.D. 595, the Loma Caldera in what is now El Salvador erupted, sending clouds of volcanic ash into the Mayan agricultural village of Cerén, burying it twenty feet deep and turning it into the New World equivalent of Pompeii. Miraculously, all the villagers escaped, but what they left behind gives us a …